me and november 16

these days are strange and sometimes seem to run together –

i am now on 150 mg of venlafaxine, 1200 mg of lithium, and 10-15mg of ambien for sleep.

the ambien is a joke. i am not meant to sleep anymore. i am writing this after taking the 10mg around 12 a.m., falling asleep around 12:30 a.m. and waking up around 4:30 a.m. this is the fourth night in a row that i have been unable to sleep for even 5 hours at once. it is 6:30 now, and i will most likely be awake until 12 a.m. or 1 a.m. tomorrow. ugh. i am so fucking sick of whining about this.

i am seeing a lady once a week for talk therapy. i’ve seen her three times now and am still warming up to her. she is nice, but has a way of speaking to me that sometimes sounds as if she has lost all patience with me. i know that some of this is my BPD and being too sensitive, so i am trying my hardest to let it go.

you are a fighter too, sweetheart. everything you say to me you need to remember for yourself as well – though i know that is difficult to follow sometimes.
thank you for hanging in there with me.
we have each other.

Happy to hear you like the support group. I keep hearing it is important to have people in your circle who you can go to in times of crisis… people who might understand… I keep looking for them in my friends and they don’t know how to (understandably) deal. I have a small mental health team but they are busy. I do seem to connect to people virtually but sometimes I need a real hug. Maybe I will let go of my expectations someday…

Okay then, don’t know where that all came from! Kudos to you for reaching out for help and giving it your best shot with your new therapist.

hi trish! i don’t know where you live, but i go to the DBSA (depression and bipolar support alliance) group in houston. i don’t know if they are country wide or not, but you might try googling them. it’s nice to sit in a room with a bunch of strangers without the fear of being judged, and when people tell you they know how it feels – surprise, they actually do.
i hope you are able to find something like that.
and thank you. 🙂

Not being able to sleep… I feel for you on that one. I was on Lamictal for a little over a month and only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep everyday, even with Ambien. It was making me delirious and causing a lot of suicidal stuff to surface. I told my psych I’d rather have mood swings than be suicidal…. she was mostly on board with that line of logic! Is taking two Ambien pills at once a non-option? Is it possible you might not have an extended release formula? I think mine are 10 mg and just one will do a good 10 hour snooze for me, when my brain isn’t being frustrating that is.

Also, as a chronic insomniac, there were a few really key things I did to finally gain control of my sleep patterns after an entire childhood of intense rounds of insomnia. Seriously, how can a 5 year old have insomnia? Anyway — Upgrade your bed. Get in debt for it if that is what it takes. Make sure your bed feels like heaven. Black out your room. Cut out as much noise as possible. Make sure you can maintain a comfortable temperature, even if that means sleeping under 5 blankets and setting the AC to 40 degrees. Do NOT do day-to-day things in your bed. Keeping a TV by my bed was the worst thing I ever did for my depression. Try to create a bedtime routine. Mine isn’t so much the specific activities but the location of them. Go to the bathroom, go to bedroom to get water cup, back to bathroom, take meds, maybe wash face/brush teeth, turn on side lamp, turn off overhead, enter from the right side of the bed. If I’m really tired, I just pass out then and there. If I need a little more, I pull out a book or Sudoku. My brain then fully accepts my desires and shuts off. If you are in your bed for more than 20 minutes (you know when you are fighting a lost cause), get out of bed and do ANYTHING but just lay there. I’ve been really terrible about following that rule lately and it is very hard to abide by when you so desperately just want to sleep.

It doesn’t matter what time of night I do that although lately I’ve been pushing it as far back as possible because of my elevated anxiety. And this didn’t happen overnight, this was a process that took many months to perfect.

thank you for the ideas, k. i have thought about the new bed, and maybe it is time to upgrade. my bedroom is like a coffin, which does help quite a bit.
it’s a lot or trial and error, that’s for sure.
can’t wait to hang out soon!

I love your ink.
Across the right side of my rib cage I’ve got chains that look like they are coming in and out of the skin and the words on the links read ‘no relief no release just keep going’. Most days that’s exactly how I feel.

I have fibromyalgia on top of everything else. I could give you the whole list of diagnosis, but its depressing. I made an alphabet list once with all of them. The only two letters I couldn’t fill in were X & Z.

Anyway, for people with fibromyalgia sleep is “very important”
I’ve never slept like a normal person going all the way back to infancy.
Oh, and don’t believe those fucking commercials about fibromyalgia. This shit feels like the flu multiplied by 10 when I’m off my meds. Mother fuckers under playing it, oh its just over active nerves…take cymbalta and you’ll be fine…A bad flare up feels like you got hit by a bus…bastards…

I don’t sleep either. When the manic hits, I can be up for 3 days easy. Which isnt good for my body, but I read a lot of books 🙂

So, here’s my take on sleep meds and what kinda worked & really didn’t. I should also mention, I build up immunity to drugs really quick..
damn that eighteen 500mg morphine pills suicide attempt….

I’ve tried running myself ragged cleaning. I may sleep, but I pay for it with a fibromyalgia flare up. Then, I’m stuck in bed for a day, but still not asleep.

I’ve tried just laying there. After an hour I get up. Plus my husband snores which sorta doesn’t help that whole sleep thing.

I’m a diabetic. If I eat too much sugar, I fall asleep. Apparently, sugar induced sleep comas are frowned upon.

I’ve been on ambien. Made me sleep about 3 hours. When I would wake up, I felt hung over, all of the suck of being drunk with none of the fun.

I’ve been on lunesta. Messed with the manic. I kinda like the manic. I get so much done.

I’ve been on some prescription that was melatonin. I can take up to a 100mg of melatonin and its like I took a sugar pill. In the beginning on melatonin I did sleep…for 2 to 4 hours, but then there is that pesky building up immunity to the drug.

I’ve tried L-theanine. It’s a green tree extract (no caffeine) I would sleep about 6 hours if I took enough. The Japanese give it to children with ADHD but it works for sleep because it balances out the alpha waves and makes you stay in delta & theta longer. This one I’ve had the most success with.

I’ve tried California poppy. All of the benefits of the naughty poppy but none of the addiction. It clashed badly with the lamictal but it work really well when I could take it.
And when I say it clashed badly, I mean hallucinations that would make me scream. Of course, I had those as I began taking the lamictal anyway. The the poppies just made it worse.

I still hallucinate, hear voices, i hear random music (not like one song over & over) etc but I have developed a new test to determine whether its real or a hallucination…If I can’t smell it, it ain’t real 🙂

Currently, I’m taking 200mg 5HTP (keeps the fibromyalgia in check & does make me kinda sleepy), 400 mg of lamictal, 30mg of restoril, 3mg of Klonipin and 1000mg of magnesium to take the place of lithium.
plus all the other shit for the kidney and liver disease…
I carry my pills in a little basket 🙂

Monday, I was up from 7am and I went to bed Tuesday at 11am and slept 4 hours.

wow. that is a lot. i feel for you on many different levels – especially when it comes to trying everything under the sun and still not being able to find your sleep.
sometimes it is hard because i wonder if i am doomed with this forever. i know there are certain things that yes, i will have for the rest of my life, but this shitty sleep pattern i won’t be able to deal with.
thank you for reading and for sharing with me. i do hope some peace comes to you soon in whatever way it can.
take care.

ive had to do a lot of my own research to deal with the falling down house i call my body…no matter the doctor you only see them for about 15mins a month there is no way they can know your skin as well as you can so i research
what else is there to do when you cant sleep 😀
yeah i’d like to be able to make things go away too
i really would but i just keep going

oh & btw if you haven’t noticed i like your blog…
honesty is refreshing and anything else is a waste of time